YOUR VIEW: In opposition of circus elephants

Once again the circus is in town, so that mothers fathers, aunts and uncles can take their children to be entertained by clowns, acrobats, and captured wild animals. All of these performers have a choice to perform or not. That is everyone except the animals and especially the wild animals and especially the elephants.

Elephants are the largest mammals and yet some of the most peaceful, spending their lives in their natural environments, grazing, walking up to 50 miles in a day in family units of females and their babies. In times of danger, the elephant herd will surround their young and will die rather then allow harm to their young.

However, the elephants you see in the circus do not live a life that in anyway resembles their natural lives. These elephants, taken from their families, are enslaved for their entire lives. They spend almost every waking moment chained in a railcar or to the ground, unable to move more then a few feet. They are imprisoned for our entertainment value, performing painful and unnatural tricks as they are hauled around the country while they suffer. They suffer from the absence of any fraction of their normal lives, separated from their family members, all for their entertainment value to the circus.

Other countries have come to understand this and have banned wild animals in circuses- Greece, Austria, Bolivia, Finland, India, Singapore, Sweden, Israel, Costa Rica, Peru and Denmark have all banned circus elephants. They have come to understand that the use of these animals, the suffering they endure for our entertainment is not right and in fact is inhumane.

It is about time that we understand that the stunts we see these elephants perform is not worth the misery we inflict on them. We should be outraged that this continues.